Half-Life

It was Valve's first game. The studio wanted it out in November 1997 to take on Quake II, but by September realized it simply wasn't fun. Sierra would not put in more money, so Gabe Newell took out a loan to rework it.

The team first planned ordinary cutscenes, but ran out of time for them. Writer Marc Laidlaw later said that this brought immersion and a sense of loneliness instead. And he came up with the train ride at the very start after an engineer wrote train code for a different idea.

The finale on the alien world of Xen is generally seen as the weakest part. In November 2023, for the 25th anniversary, Valve restored the Steam version's 1998 content, and two days later 33,471 people were playing at once, more than ever before. Players leave 96% positive out of 118,452 reviews, and critics give it 96 on Metacritic. By our Recommended Score it is #86 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try Black Mesa, a fan-made remake that rebuilt the much-maligned Xen from scratch, and Half-Life: Opposing Force, which shows the same events through the eyes of a Marine, one of the original's enemies.